5 basic mistakes that can ruin your work or renovation

renovate and build These are tasks that require patience, planning and organization. And nothing can be more frustrating for a homeowner than finding, at the end of the process, basic errors that compromise the ability to live in a house or apartment. Engineer Matheus Moura, from Construtora Vizotto Mouraexplains that some of the most common mistakes, and that can bring more problems in the future, can be easily avoided.

The engineer’s first tip is hire a surveyor to make the correct measurements of the terrain and the square of the work. “Building without demarcating the land correctly is a serious mistake and that, in addition to high financial losses, generates bureaucracy with the change in the property’s documentation”, he explains.

Failure to properly check the square also causes a headache for the owner. “When the square is not correct, you have walls of different sizes and rooms that can be ‘crooked’. This is very apparent when installing the floor”, he explains.

Be careful with the water

Neglecting to take care of waterproofing of baldrame beams (foundation)swimming pools and wet areas is another recurring problem in several properties that causes permanent damage.

“If the person in charge of the work doesn’t waterproof the beams, the humidity goes up through the walls and creates a huge problem for the resident, because there’s no way to fix this after the house is ready. It’s important to use quality products because this is the kind of economy that does incalculable damage,” he says.

Roof

The person responsible for a work must be aware of the water collection system. Bad sizing of gutters and flashings, which direct water to the rainwater outlet, can cause it to return to the roof.

“Water is one of the biggest problems in a building. So, from the moment you have water at some point not prepared to receive it, it will find a way to pass and will give you a lot of headache”, guides the engineer.

leveling

Neglecting heights and drops within a home also creates problems when leveling the floor. Bathrooms, wet areas and balconies need to be at a lower level than the rest of the house to prevent any accumulation of water from spreading.

“Usually we leave two centimeters less than the level of the house. But even so, we have to level the floor in these areas to direct the water to the drains. When this is not done, the water puddles in a certain place, a mistake inadmissible that can be avoided with simple supervision”, he says.

Moura explains that all these failures can be avoided with simple measures that include the use of quality materials, in the case of waterproofing, hiring a surveyor to check the correct measurements and closely monitoring the progress of the work.

“This supervision is carried out by the engineer responsible for the work, which is why hiring a construction company to carry out the project offers less risk. In the case where there is no construction company involved, the check is up to the foreman, together with the engineer in charge” , complete.

five mistakes

• Measuring terrain incorrectly
• Not checking the work square
• Failure to waterproof foundation beams, wet areas and pool
• Bad sizing of flashings and gutters
• Incorrectly leveling wet areas